was found on which they could land,
they said their prayers with superb audacity, fought the natives if they
cared to fight, erected crosses, and took possession in the names of
their sovereigns, establishing claims, such as they were, to everything
in sight and beyond, to be quarreled for and battled for, and
passed from hand to hand in treaties and settlements made during the
intermissions of war.

The branch of the river that bears the name of Columbia all the way to
its head takes its rise in two lakes about ten miles in length that lie
between the Selkirk and main ranges of the Rocky Mountains in British
Columbia, about eighty miles beyond the boundary line. They are called
the Upper and Lower Columbia Lakes. Issuing from these, the young river
holds a nearly straight course for a hundred and seventy miles in a
northwesterly direction to a plain called "Boat Encampment," receiving
many beautiful affluents by the way from the Selkirk and main ranges,
among which are the Beaver-Foot, Blackberry, Spill-e-Mee-Chene, and Gold
Rivers. At Boat Encampment it receives two large tributaries, the Canoe
River from the northwest, a stream about a hundred and twenty miles
long; and the Whirlpool River from the north, about a hundred and forty
miles in length.

The Whirlpool River takes its rise near the summit of the main axis of
the range on the fifty-fourth parallel, and is the northmost of all
the Columbia waters. About thirty miles above its confluence with the
Columbia it flows through a lake called the Punch-Bowl, and thence it
passes between Mounts Hooker and Brown, said to be fifteen thousand
and sixteen thousand feet high, making magnificent scenery; though the
height of the mountains thereabouts has been considerably overestimated.
From Boat Encampment the river, now a large, clear stream, said to be
nearly a third of a mile in width, doubles back on its original course
and flows southward as far as its confluence with the Spokane in
Washington, a distance of nearly three hundred miles in a direct line,
most of the way through a wild, rocky, picturesque mass of mountains,
charmingly forested with pine and spruce--though the trees seem
strangely small, like second growth saplings, to one familiar with the
western forests of Washington, Oregon, and California.

About forty-five miles below Boat Encampment are the Upper Dalles, or
Dalles de Mort, and thirty miles farther the Lower Dalles, where the
river makes a magnif